A Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is a type of online learning environment that has the potential to increase students' access to education. However, the low completion rates in MOOCs suggest that student engagement and progression in the courses are problematic. Following the increasing adoption of gamification in education, it is possible that gamification can also be effectively adopted in MOOCs to enhance students' motivation and increase completion rates. Yet at present, the extent to which gamification has been examined in MOOCs is not known. Considering the myriad gamification elements that can be adopted in MOOCs (e.g., leaderboards and digital badges), this theoretical research study reviews scholarly publications examining gamification of MOOCs. The main purpose is to provide an overview of studies on gamification in MOOCs, types of research studies, theories applied, gamification elements implemented, methods of implementation, the overall impact of gamification in MOOCs, and the challenges faced by researchers and practitioners when implementing gamification in MOOCs. The results of the literature study indicate that research on gamification in MOOCs is in its early stages. While there are only a handful of empirical research studies, results of the experiments generally showed a positive relation between gamification and student motivation and engagement. It is concluded that there is a need for further studies using educational theories to account for the effects of employing gamification in MOOCs.

Many large-scale, school-based interventions have attempted to improve academic performance through promoting students' growth mindset, defined as the belief that one's intellectual ability can increase with practice and time. However, most have shown weak to no effects. Thus, it is important to examine how growth mindset might affect retention and transfer of learning, as well as process-related variables such as cognitive load. In a double-blind, randomized controlled experiment based on 138 secondary school students, the effects of an experimentally induced growth mindset belief were examined during a learning phase in a classroom setting. Participants in the growth mindset condition perceived a lower intrinsic load and extraneous load and performed better on retention and transfer tests. Students with some prior knowledge also reported a higher mastery goal orientation. Supplementary mediation analysis suggested that the effect on transfer could be fully accounted for by changes in cognitive load perceptions. Future interventions may benefit from designs that promote motivational beliefs that reduce intrinsic and extraneous cognitive load perceptions. Educational Impact And Implications StatementThe experimental study is based on a sample of secondary school students who were presented a short lesson on how sound travels. The study showed that cultivating a growth mindset helped the learners adopt learning goals that focus on development of knowledge and skill. Learners also experienced less cognitive load and achieved deeper understanding of the lesson. These results imply that interventions targeting growth mindset may indeed increase learner motivation and improve learning.

We would like to express our gratitude to Alex van Straaten, Sven Cammeraat, and Tudor Cristea for their help during the data collection. We would also like to thank prof. dr. Rolf Plötzner for providing the materials used in Experiment 3. This research was funded by the Excellence Initiative grant from the Erasmus University Rotterdam awarded to the Educational Psychology section. We also thank the Erasmus Behavioral Lab, especially Marcel Boom, for their continued help in the lab.

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The split-attention effect entails that learning from spatially separated, but mutually referring information sources (e.g., text and picture) is less effective than learning from the equivalent spatially integrated sources. According to cognitive load theory, impaired learning is caused by the working memory load imposed by the need to distribute attention between the information sources and mentally integrate them. In this study, we directly tested whether the split-attention effect is caused by spatial separation per se. Spatial distance was varied in basic cognitive tasks involving pictures (Experiment 1) and text-picture combinations (Experiment 2; pre-registered study), and in more ecologically valid learning materials (Experiment 3). Experiment 1 showed that having to integrate two pictorial stimuli at greater distances diminished performance on a secondary visual working memory task, but did not lead to slower integration. When participants had to integrate a picture and written text in Experiment 2, a greater distance led to slower integration of the stimuli, but not to diminished performance on the secondary task. Experiment 3 showed that presenting spatially separated (compared to integrated) textual and pictorial information yielded fewer integrative eye movements, but this was not further exacerbated when increasing spatial distance even further. This effect on learning processes did not lead to differences in learning outcomes between conditions. In conclusion, we provide evidence that larger distances between spatially separated information sources influence learning processes, but that spatial separation on its own is not likely to be the only, nor a sufficient, condition for impacting learning outcomes.